RUSSIA’S grim roll call of high-profile deaths has grown again — this time claiming the man who once controlled the Kremlin’s loudest propaganda voice.
Vyacheslav Leontyev, 87, the secretive boss of the Pravda publishing empire, plunged 70ft from the balcony of his Moscow apartment.
East2WestVyacheslav Leontyev, 87, died after falling 70ft from his Moscow apartment balcony[/caption]
East2WestLeontyev was the secretive boss of the Pravda publishing empire (headquarters pictured), controlling Soviet propaganda[/caption]
Police say they are investigating whether the Saturday night death was an accident, suicide, or foul play.
Leontyev wasn’t just any old Soviet relic.
For decades, he ran Pravda — “Truth” — the mouthpiece of the Communist Party and one of the most powerful media machines of the USSR.
Long after the Soviet collapse, he remained in charge, a man believed to know where the party’s hidden billions were buried.
Exiled journalist Andrey Malgin called it another “strange death”, writing: “The window falls continue… Leontyev, fell from a window.
“He was found near his home on Molodogvardeyskaya Street, where he lived.”
Malgin, who knew Leontyev, added: “He gave the impression of a sort of underground millionaire…
“He knew a lot about the ‘Party’s money’ — the Pravda publishing house was the most profitable enterprise in the business empire of the CPSU Central Committee.”
Unconfirmed reports say Leontyev had been in poor health.
But his fall slots neatly into a chilling pattern of deaths among Russia’s elite — a body count that has soared since Vladimir Putin launched his war on Ukraine.
Last month, former St Petersburg transport boss Alexander Fedotov’s body was found outside the five-star Skypoint Luxe hotel at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo international airport.
He had been staying on a business trip in a room on a “high floor” in the hotel, according to reports.
A criminal investigation is underway with reports saying no suicide note was found.
He was linked to Vladimir Putin’s transport minister Roman Starovoit, 53, whose death in July – officially designated as suicide hours after Putin fired him – remains highly suspicious amid claims he had been “tortured” before being “murdered”.
Among dozens of deaths seen as suspicions are Lukoil tycoon Ravil Maganov, 67, who fell from a window of Moscow’s elite Central Clinical Hospital, also known as the Kremlin clinic, in September 2022.
He was replaced by Vladimir Nekrasov – who died aged 66 of “acute heart failure” in October 2023.
Both Maganov and Nekrasov had opposed Putin’s war.
The following month, Russian senator and war backer, Vladimir Lebedev, with close Lukoil links, died suddenly in an unexplained “terrible tragedy” aged 60.
East2WestThe front page of Pravda newspaper in the Soviet era[/caption]
East2WestThe Pravda headquarters[/caption]
In March, 2024, Lukoil vice-president Vitaly Robertus, 53, was found hanged in his office toilet.
Separately, Pavel Antov, 65, a Russian sausage tycoon and politician, fell from a hotel window in India in December 2022.
And Marina Yankina, 58, a defence official in charge of war money, died in February 2023 after falling 160ft to her death in St Petersburg.
Meanwhile, Former oil company vice president Mikhail Rogachev, 64, died after falling from his tenth-floor apartment in Moscow in October 2024.
He had been a senior executive at Yukos, an oil company dismembered by Putin and his cronies.
And in July this year, Transneft vice-president Andrey Badalov, 62, fell to his death from the elite tower block where he lived on Moscow’s Rublevskoye Highway.
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